Obama pushes for health-bill deal

After an unusual day-long negotiating session, President Barack Obama and top Democratic congressional leaders said late Wednesday that they were making “significant progress” towards reconciling the House and Senate health care reform bills.

Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement at the close of more than eight hours of White House talks – by far the most significant, high-level negotiations undertaken during the yearlong push for health care reform.

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“Today we made significant progress in bridging the remaining gaps between the two health insurance reform bills,” according to the statement. “We’re encouraged and energized, and we’re resolved to deliver reform legislation that provides more stability and security for those with insurance, extends coverage to those who don’t have coverage, and lowers costs for families, businesses, and governments."

The talks were scheduled to continue Thursday, according to a House Democratic aide.

Wednesday’s session lasted longer than White House or congressional aides had initially anticipated, stretching from the morning until about 6:45 p.m. Negotiations broke for the night with no official agreements to announce.

But the marathon session signaled that House and Senate leaders — with the president in the room for much of the day — were far closer to resolution on the issues that have divided the two chambers for months.

“We’re moving along,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told POLITICO during a break, as she rushed back to the Capitol for several votes.

In reality, the session at the White House was a de facto conference committee, with House and Senate leaders meeting privately to hash out differences in the bill. Pelosi and Reid have been heavily criticized by Republicans for circumventing the normal conference committee process, even though much of the work under that structure also takes place behind closed doors.

Those involved in the talks sought to keep details of their progress under wraps. The negotiations delved into the Senate’s controversial tax on expensive insurance plans, which unions and House members strongly oppose, and, for a while Wednesday, labor leaders huddled privately with top administration aides.

Boosting the Medicare payroll tax – either by increasing the rate or extending it to unearned income – is still a live option, according to sources familiar with the talks.

The tax would open the door to significantly more revenues, according to Joint Committee on Taxation. That infusion of cash could help offset the revenue lost by raising the threshold at which the tax on expensive insurance plans would kick in to make it more palatable to unions. Democrats are also looking to increase the amount of subsidies for lower-income individuals to purchase insurance.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) cautioned earlier Wednesday against conclusions that a deal was at hand on the tax package or any other aspect of the legislation.

“I’m not going to go into specifics because it’s a whole package, and we have to reach agreement on the whole package,” Hoyer said.

Hoyer said there is an understanding in the room about how angry House members are over the inclusion of a tax on high-end insurance plans, but that was not the sole focus of the meeting.

“We’ve been talking about the whole gamut of issues that are raised by differences by the Senate and the House, the whole gamut,” he said.

The daylong negotiations with the president’s participation underscored the pressure on the White House to wrap up the bill. Issues continue to pile up on the president’s agenda — he cycled in and out of the room in part to deal with the crisis in Haiti. And Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts, which has put the 60th Democratic vote in the Senate at risk, has injected only more urgency into the push.